. The racers are designed to belch 15-foot (4.5-meter) flames from their engines that can be easily seen by spectators, and carry limited amounts of rocket fuel to fly through a three-dimensional aerial race course.

"It's the start of a new industry, and certainly a new sports and entertainment company," Whitelaw said.

John, it sounds like an idea for a game, and considering Rage is already about racing - how about aerial rocket race ?

Modeling the physics of the flight is probably quite like the AA software you already did.

This way you'll be able to promote one of your jobs with another (not sure which will help which, though )

I went to AirVenture this year in Oshkosh. The only real reason I went was to see the inaugural race of the Rocket Racing League, and support "our" team: Armadillo Aerospace!

Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a race: only the XCOR rocket was running. Though I do have pictures of the AA rocketplane (without wings) that was there.

I was also hoping to see an AA guy or two there, but I was told that they couldn't make it to Oshkosh because they were too busy with the LLC. Can't say I blame them (*I'm* not going to possibly give them >$1M), but it was a disappointment.

Also, I was told that the RRL asked AA not to make any more updates. I found that odd: I think that most of the people interested in things like the RRL are interested in *very* large part *because* of the AA updates... It would, however, explain the two-month lull in updates.

All-in-all, a fairly disappointing trip to Oshkosh. I live in Michigan, so AirVenture was really my only realistic chance to see the rocket racers: I can't make it all the way to Nevada.

I agree about the updates. I did not care a whit about the RRL until they brought in AA. I could become a fan if given a chance to follow the development. I don't think the RRL is handling the PR very well. People naturally want information, but their website has not seen an update in years

I am with you guys. I am having serious withdrawals from no AA updates.

And RRL probably has the worst PR i have seen in a venture looking to "capture everyone's interest"

They haven't put a single new thing up in a long time. THey have ONE short video of their plane flying at Oshkosh that includes a bunch of previous clips from their stock video.

HEck the EAA website has more information and video footage about RRL than RRL does!!!!

How long does it really take for them to assign an intern or SOMEONE to spend an hour a month putting together a couple paragraphs and pictures of their progress or wahtever is going on.

I understand that AA is now getting paid to build rockets but i have to say that i wish AA would still give us updates about SOMETHING!!!

It was very nice to see someone on the leading edge of this whole private space industry willing to share the excitement and drama of trying to get to space. I mean honestly it is almost like following a sci-fi book. Videos, pictures, monthly updates.

Definitely agree. What is the RRL thinking?! And I don't see how they could restrict Armadillo from posting updates about their work for NASA or in preperation for LLC. Well, except for them being really busy, or not having much to say if most of their work has been on the RRL vehicle.

If you go back upthread a few pages, there are links to flikr pages for RRL and Russel Blink, those have some tantalizing nuggets including a taxi test with the Armadillo RRL, red flame and all.

You touch on a particularily frustrating point. My enthusiasm stemmed almost exclusively from their willingness to include us in the adventure. Blue Origin flew too. And, untethered as well. I don't visit their site. I don't even think to look into what news may be available. I just don't care. With Armadillo Aerospace, I check for an update nearly every day. Heck, I joined this forum for precisely the reason that I wished to see if anyone else had information on why the sudden silence. I did read the post regarding RRL, but John actually gave us an update at the same time as he mentioned the agreement to keep quiet on their development. The AA site specifically points you here for their official forum. Yet, not one of them bother to even post a "sorry, can't talk" or anything that would indicate when we might hear more.

I'm beginning to think that it's wait for LLC '08 and be happy with that. Well, I'm not too happy with that. I hope this hiatus concludes soon.

I also miss AA updates, but it's not the first time John's taken a long break from posting; I remember some three-month quiet stretches last year. While it's disappointing, it's also totally up to them how much they post, or even if they post at all.

I'm sure things at id are extremely busy now that they're deep in development on Rage and starting research into id tech 6, and AA is heads down trying to satisfy their first paying clients. My guess is they're spending all their time on production for the RRL and on flight tests to finally nail the LLC, and they're moving out of "research" mode and into "production" mode. Which is awesome. I'd take the lack of updates as a positive sign. They've gone so far above and beyond in terms of their openness, I can cut them some slack this summer.

On the other hand, I also agree that the RRL is doing a terrible job of keeping the community interested. Sigh, it looks like they're stuck in a pre-Web model of what "PR" means (e.g. "only say anything when you have a big event to sell tickets to"). No concept of what blogging is all about. It's OK for AA to go dark after having been so meticulous about being open all along, but the RRL has hardly ever done anything to communicate.

Fair enough, Rob. I read all of the news, updates and blogs on AA and have a very personal interest in their progress. I think it makes me very possessive about them and their operation. That tends to color my comments and attitude.

If you or anyone else took offense at my frustrated diatribe, I apologize. I'm a NewSpace Nerd and a space addict as well. I got hooked on AA and get a little sour when I can't feed my habit.

If you have a moment, could you explain how the work on the methane engine for NASA works. Did they come to you or were they out shopping for someone to do this work? Also, did they indicate an application for the engine? I read where you said John mentioned that it would be good for an upper stage engine.

Lastly, what kind of welding do you do on the engine? Is the wire composition matched to the engine metal or do you have to worry about that?

James, I'm curious if any of you guys other than John ever get interviewed or do any other 'publicity' type stuff?

I recently read a short piece that had some stuff from John in it, which is where I got the numbers for John's work week hours in that other thread. I've also seen John at a local Science Fiction/Fact/Fantasy/Gaming convention several years ago. That was interesting in that the video game fans dominated the Q&A session he had (well it was one of the interesting things), one of them even commented that John seemed much more interested in talking about Armadillo than Quake/Doom but most of the questions asked were video game related.

I don't recall offhand if anyone else at Armadillo has hit any of those types of conventions but I would imagine that there would be some demand for any of you guys to appear at them. I would also imagine that you guys would be quite popular at events like air shows but that finding the time to interact with people in addition to all of the work you guys have to do at such shows would be quite a challenge.